Basic Python Questions - Oct. 31, 2013

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 12:17 AM, Alain Ketterlin
<alain at dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> wrote:
> "E.D.G." <edgrsprj at ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
>>       The calculation speed question just involves relatively simple
>> math such as multiplications and divisions and trig calculations such
>> as sin and tan etc.
>
> These are not "simple" computations.
>
> Any compiled language (Fortran, C, C++, typically) will probably go much
> faster than any interpreted/bytecode-based language (like python or
> perl, anything that does not use a jit).

Well, they may not be simple to do, but chances are you can push the
work down to the CPU/FPU on most modern hardware - that is, if you're
working with IEEE floating point, which I'm pretty sure CPython always
does; not sure about other Pythons. No need to actually calculate trig
functions unless you need arbitrary precision (and even then, I'd bet
the GMP libraries have that all sewn up for you). So the language
doesn't make a lot of difference.

ChrisA